The mainstream media has launched a full-scale blitzkrieg against Dr. Jerome Corsi's important book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. This is one of several recent important books, because it puts together the kind of critical information that the mainstream media either ignores altogether or plays down into near insignificance. Like it or not, we have a mainstream media that closely resembles the Russian Kremlin-controlled one-party media that basically reports only the Putin party line.

Our mainstream media, instead of supporting only Vladimir Putin, supports only Sen. Barack Obama. That's a dangerous way to elect a president, only hearing about what the mainstream media thinks will help elect Mr. Obama. So books like Mr. Corsi's and the other alternatives to the mainstream media are of great importance.

The nature of that attack on Mr. Corsi's book is perfectly illustrated by a column which the Philadelphia Inquirer ran by Eugene Robinson entitled, "The Slime Master Returns, Out to Smear Obama This Time" (Aug. 17, 2008).Mr. Robinson is syndicated by the Washington Post, a leader of the dishonest, fraudulent, and biased mainstream media, which treats Mr. Obama as a deity and ignores or refutes with lies all criticism of him. Consider the column, starting with the headline:

1. The major thrust of the criticism of Mr. Corsi consists of the standard ad hominem attack, calling Mr. Corsi a "slime master." The column goes on to claim he is spewing lies, venom, vitriol and smears as he did with the book he co-authored on John Kerry, Unfit for Command. Instead of dealing with the substance of the criticism, the attack is on Mr. Corsi. ...

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Security papers released today reveal how the Secret Service had Quentin Joyce interned to prevent him helping the Nazis

By Ian Griggs31 August 2008

The brother of Lord Haw-Haw, the most notorious Nazi propaganda broadcaster, was also suspected of spying for the Germans, it was revealed today. Quentin Joyce, the younger brother of William Joyce, who was nicknamed Lord Haw-Haw, was interned after it was discovered that he was in contact with suspected German intelligence officers.

Security Service files released today reveal that Quentin Joyce was put under surveillance by MI5 after they realised he worked for the Directorate of Signals in the Air Ministry, a position that might allow him access to vital military information.

They grew doubly concerned after covert surveillance revealed he was in touch with a suspected German intelligence officer.

Some of the letters sent between the pair used phrases about stamp collecting that British intelligence believed were coded phrases.

At the outbreak of war, Quentin was arrested and interned. He was released in 1943 but banned from joining the armed services for fear that he would apply to become an officer and pose an even greater security threat.

His unrepentant brother William was later captured and brought back to Britain, where he was hanged for treason for his wartime activities by the executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

The Security Service was also watching a suspected German spy called Christian Harri Bauer, who was working undercover as a journalist in Britain from 1934, because of his friendship with the Joyce brothers. Their suspicions about him were confirmed when his landlady contacted police after discovering a suspicious letter in his wastepaper basket which read: "This is the list of British cruisers and aircraft ... it is too difficult to get photographs."

Bauer returned to Berlin in 1937, where he continued writing letters to Quentin Joyce, some of which were seen by MI5, although they were unable to intercept any of his replies. One letter that caused alarm was a request that Joyce collect as many "stamps" as possible relating to British Africa and send them to Germany.

Bauer also asked Joyce to use his contacts in government departments to find out if "your chaps at headquarters have anything against me" ahead of a potential return to Britain. He also showed Joyce around Berlin during a three-week visit to the city in September 1938.

By August 1939, when war with Germany was imminent, William Joyce fled to Germany. The Security Service believed it was too dangerous to allow Quentin to remain free and sought his arrest under the Emergency Powers Act. When they raided his London home they discovered original copies of letters sent to him by Bauer.

Quentin Joyce was adamant that he was innocent of spying for Germany, although he admitted wanting Britain to be on friendly terms with the Nazi superpower. "All my actions in the past must have shown me to be thoroughly patriotic and British in every way," he wrote in a statement to the Home Office during the first weeks of his detention. He told interrogators his relationship with Bauer was innocent. His pleas were ignored because of the expectation of a German invasion and the danger of having Nazi sympathisers aid them.

Other documents released by the National Archives today include files on Brian Fitzgerald-Hume, a gangster who once boasted of throwing the dismembered body of his business partner from a plane into the North Sea in 1949, although he was never convicted of the crime.

Fitzgerald-Hume, a former RAF private, was being watched by MI5 because he was suspected first of having communist leanings in the late 1930s, and then of being a fascist sympathiser during the war years.

Other files show how British intelligence considered sending carrier pigeons with misleading information behind enemy lines in an attempt to confuse the German army in the lead-up to the D-Day landings.

Thousands of birds were sent into occupied France during the war equipped with information to help the French Resistance, but less than 10 per cent returned to their home lofts, and it was assumed that many had fallen into German hands.

Intelligence chiefs decided to make use of this by sending pigeons out with false information which, it was hoped, would lead the Germans to defend against D-Day landings in the wrong place, but the plan was never carried out.

CBC's Newsworld's The Passionate Eye will premiere "9/11 Conspiracy Files: The Third Tower" on Monday, Sept. 8 at 10 pm. It's part of a series of documentaries investigating some of the world's most persistent conspiracy theories - from 9/11 to why world oil prices have tripled in the last four years.

Oil Apocalypse Now? will debut on Monday, Sept. 15 at 10 pm. The series, filmed in 13 countries over a four-year period, reveals the myths and theories surrounding the future of the world's oil supplies.

Written and directed by acclaimed documentarian Terence McKenna, The Secret History of 9/11 will air Sunday, Sept. 7 at 10 pm. It investigates "the long, secret war waged against al Qaeda from the White House, the CIA and the FBI."

Falling Man, airing Sunday, Sept. 14 at 10 pm ET/PT, examines the story behind the photograph of a man jumping to his death from the World Trade Center. Interviewees include the photographer who shot the picture, the editors who published and then banned it, the journalists who tried to identify the man and finally members of his family.

CBC's documentaries will also include the six-episode Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work, which will begin airing on Wednesday, Sept. 10 at 10 pm. The first ep looks at the daily life of Queen Elizabeth II.

As well, there will be an encore presentation of Diana's Jewels, The Passionate Eye's highest-rated documentary, on Sept. 1 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld.

A book that makes sweeping allegations about Barack Obama tries hard to pretend it is serious research, writes Quentin Fottrell

IT'S NUMBER one on the New York Times bestseller hardback non-fiction list. But there is something about the cover of Jerome R Corsi's trash-talking summer read on Barack Obama, The Obama Nation , that jars. It's not the title, a play on the word abomination that some pundits get a kick out of saying really fast like a secret frat code that never stops being funny. No, it's not . . .

Nor is it the strapline: "Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." If free universal healthcare for children is leftist, than yes, he's a leftist. It's true: Obama has more personality than the stilted John McCain. McCain approves infomercials which talk of his "humility" and present him in a saintly light due to his time as a PoW. There's little humility in approving a message like that.

The offending item is not the boastful, "The No 1 New York Times best-selling author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry ". Its false claims helped torpedo John Kerry's campaign in 2004.

Nor is it the book itself. This is by the same publisher that printed Kitty Kelley's hatchet job on Nancy Reagan. It was to be expected.

What really jars is the big black letters after Corsi's name, "PhD", presented in large type, like a BSc on Viagra. On his multimedia odyssey, Corsi carried his PhD around like a diamante clutch purse.

It gives an elevated social status and is designed to bathe him in a more flattering light than, considering his allegations, he deserves. Or to put it another way: PhD + Innuendo = QED.

Of course, this is nothing new at home either. Once, during a heated interview with a priest-cum-academic (who has both an MA and PhD), his words of last resort were: "I've read Aristotle and Plato!" A PhD is no small achievement, but it's the intellectual grandstanding and, in Corsi's case, the use of those letters as weapons of mass communication to support his allegations that bothers me.

Corsi, who got his PhD in political science from Harvard in 1972, alleges Obama has "extensive connections" to Islam and supports infanticide in the case of induced abortions. The chief editor at Simon Schuster, Mary Matalin, a former chief aide to Dick Cheney, said this wasn't a political book but "a piece of scholarship". Corsi himself has said: "The goal is to defeat Obama."

His PhD is cited in the first sentence of his polished Wikipedia profile and he is consistently credited as "Dr Jerome Corsi" on Fox Television, the Rupert Murdoch-owned US satellite news channel where he said Obama's father was a polygamist. Not that he holds it against him, but Corsi says he insists on talking about it because Obama won't. That's boomerang logic. On any other network, it would hit come back and hit him between the eyes.

In the preface, Corsi says his 700 footnotes allow readers to judge his "factual claims", a mind-boggling oxymoron, which makes about as much sense as a "fictional truth". If the Republican's Steve Schmidt, responsible for the below-the-belt media assault on Obama, is the Bullet, then Corsi is the Cluster Stink-Bomb. (He says he will vote for Chuck Baldwin of the US Constitution Party.)

When Corsi was challenged by Democrat Bob Beckel via satellite link from Washington DC on Sean Hannity's New York-based Fox TV show, Beckel's line went down. Hannity said: "Believe it or not, the DC bureau has lost all power." I do believe it - I just wonder who pulled the plug. Corsi levelled his charge that Obama supports infanticide. Beckel resumed by mobile phone.

Here are some of Corsi's other opinions. He shrugs at their mention and says he has already apologised for them. On Muslims: "Ragheads are boy-bumpers and clearly are woman-haters." On John Kerry: "John F-ing Commie Kerry." On Hillary - or "Hellary", as he wrote - Clinton: "Hillary Clinton, Fat Hog Clinton."

One hopes that his bestseller is only preaching to the Republican converted.

Corsi told Beckel: "You're going back through ancient history. I don't think that's fair," and later told Larry King: "They don't express my true views. They were intentionally written to be antagonistic or aggressive or provocative."

Clearly, some things never change, yet he could influence who becomes the next leader of the free world. Scary. Corsi PhD is a plank, but should be dismissed as a crank.

Corsi writes that Obama never stopped using recreational drugs. In Dreams From My Father , Obama wrote that he stopped when he went to college. When challenged on this, the good doctor responded: "We have Barack Obama's testimony on that." This is the when-have-you-stopped-using-drugs school of politics. The absence of such evidence is so not worthy of a PhD thesis.

Number two on The New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction is Stori Telling by Tori Spelling of Beverly Hills 90210 , a far more highbrow and entertaining holiday read. It's about a poor little rich girl whose late father, Aaron Spelling, was a powerful Hollywood TV producer.

Hide it inside your copy of Ulysses . Spelling does not have a PhD, it's true, but I highly recommend it.

Friday, August 29, 2008

“The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.” - H. L. Mencken

We have often questioned why our most reliable market (and economic) indicators have been pointing toward a recession for more than a year (and in one case, three years) even as government statistics have shown the economy to be growing and inflation relatively benign. This week we examine why.

But first, here is a noteworthy quote that appeared in the opening screen of Chris Martenson’s excellent 16 minute video entitled Fuzzy Numbers that provides a hint.

“Ever since the 1960s, Washington has gulled its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics, the vital instruments with which the muscle and vitality of the American economy are measured.” – Kevin Philips, April 27, 2008 Harper’s magazine entitled Hard Numbers: The economy is worse than you know.

It is no secret how fast overall debt has grown and how government agencies fudge the numbers to make the economic picture appear far more pleasing than it really is. This week we take a closer look at how they do it.Why has the spotlight of media attention suddenly illuminated this problem now? We’ll explore this question in a moment.

Since the U.S. was taken off the gold standard by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, the government has become far more creative at using inflation indicators to lull citizens although real inflation has skyrocketed, especially come election time. The double whammy is that they are also artificially boosting economic growth figures. As Martenson points out, various administrations, both Republican and Democrat have used some very clever methods to achieve this end.

Real growth occurs when inflation is low and economic growth is high. Martenson tracks how each president from JFK to Bill Clinton has added his own special sauce in dealing with undesirable stats to make things seems rosier than they really were. While these fibs have grown in both proportion and scope, their forecasting value has steadily declined.

How has this goal been achieved?

In an effort to keep inflation down and accentuate growth, statisticians shamelessly distort and manipulate the data. For example, the Consumer Price Index measures inflation in part by comparing a basket of goods over the years. But what is not publicly understood is that each year, that basket changes. In 1996, Clinton instituted changes to how the statistics are calculated that provided government economists with three new powerful methods to fudge the numbers; substitution, weighting and hedonics (derived from the Greek word for pleasure). They in effect, give government agencies three new tools to change the way they measure and present inflation and economic data at their pleasure.

Here is just one example of how one of these tools, namely substitution, works. If the price of salmon goes up too much, the Bureau of Labor Statistics substitutes it for a cheaper food item like say hot dogs. The result is that from 2007 to 2008, CPI showed a 4.1% rise in the price of food. But according to the Farm Bureau, that tracks the same basket (without using substitution, weighting or hedonics), food prices actually rose 11.3%!

Figure 2 – Difference between how CPI is calculated today by the BLS and how it was calculated in the 1960s without all the smoke and mirrors. As a result real inflation is now running at 13% not the 5%, the BLS would have us believe. Chart ChrisMartenson.com Fuzzy Numbers.

Without a doubt, hedonics is the most insidious tool in the hands of government statisticians. It allows them to creatively reduce CPI (inflation) on one hand while making economic growth appear bigger than it really is on the other. Without giving away the whole story, these minions can change the price of a product, service or good by imputing a higher value (in the case of the economy) to make growth appear greater while imputing a lower value (in the case of an inflation measure like CPI) to make inflation appear lower than it really is.

Hedonics, substitution and weightings changes currently represents 46% of reported CPI and 35% of reported GDP growth according to Martenson. In other words, about one-half of the CPI reported is real while less than two-thirds of reported GDP growth is real. The result is that inflation is growing at least twice as fast as CPI shows while economic growth appears to be nearly 50% greater than it really is.

What if CPI were calculated the same way it was in the 1960s? Using the techniques employed more than 40 years ago, John Williams of ShadowStats.com estimates that CPI in 2008 is running at 13% not the 5% reported by the BLS (see Figure 2). It’s no surprise that some economists are quick to discount Williams's conclusions but one only has to examine the rapid recent rise in global inflation to see the problem. Even with all the fudging techniques now used by government, the problem eventually becomes impossible to hide once it becomes acute.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize what will eventually happen if inflation is continually under-reported while the economic output is distorted higher.

Those who rely on this data to make decisions are relying on increasingly incorrect data and therefore make erroneous decisions – the most obvious of which is to assume the economy is growing when its not. Consumers spend more money (and go further into debt) thinking the economy is better than it is and get themselves in financial trouble. More troubling is that the majority of workers remain oblivious to job losses, an error that only becomes apparent to most when they unexpectedly lose their jobs.

What motivates governments to engage in this deceptive practice?

Undoubtedly, the strongest effect of this practice is seen in the election cycle. A number of studies show that markets do so much better leading up to elections versus after each election is over. What causes this skew? It is the overriding desire of each successive administration to get re-elected.

It is a well-understood reality that voters deal harshly come election time with incumbent governments if the economy is in trouble. Governments know this and over the years they are getting better at perfecting ways of putting voters in a good mood as they get ready to head to the polls. And inflation is the most powerful tool in their arsenal. How much better have stocks done leading up to elections versus afterwards? Read our Special Report that tracks pre-election versus post election gains in the Dow.

Getting back to our first question above, why are these documentaries and reports now gaining public attention? When bubbles are in the process of forming, everyone is too busy figuring out how to profit. It is only when they begin popping and the economy deteriorates that we reflect on our fates.

What happens when the foreigners financing our debt habit, who have also been lulled by government statistics, realize they’ve been duped? Interest rates will rise as the cost of money skyrockets to reflect true risk.

Unfortunately, this usually occurs at the worst possible time when the economy is most vulnerable and the majority is unaware of their impending fate, if history is any guide.

" ... Nechama Tec, who wrote the historical account of the Bielski partisans on which the film is based, [said] that allegations connecting the partisans to the massacre were 'total lies.' ... "

By Marissa Brostoff, The Forward8/10/2008

A new movie about a band of Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis during the Holocaust has led some in Poland to suggest that the group may also have been murderers.

In anticipation of the December release of Defiance starring Daniel Craig, aka James Bond, a Polish newspaper ran an article headlined, "A Hollywood Movie About Heroes or Murderers?"

The article in Gazeta Wyborcza contrasts the film's portrayal of Tuvia Bielski as a Moses figure leading frightened women and children through the forest, with a recently released report from a Polish government investigative body. The government report suggests that Bielski and his followers may have participated in a massacre of civilians in the eastern Polish town of Naliboki.

The tarnishing of the Bielski partisans has infuriated a number of people close to the memory of the group. Some of those people have also been involved with the production of the movie, directed by Ed Zwick (Legends of the Fall,The Last Samurai). Nechama Tec, who wrote the historical account of the Bielski partisans on which the film is based, told the Forward that allegations connecting the partisans to the massacre were "total lies."

Those allegations "underline the anti-Semitic tendencies of the writers and the distortion of history," Tec said.

The controversy comes on the heels of a Lithuanian government investigation into allegations that Jewish partisans committed war crimes during World War II. That investigation has been met with dismay on the part of Jewish communal leaders inside and outside Lithuania, who note that only three Lithuanians have ever been prosecuted for wartime crimes against Jews.

The reinvestigation - or, as some former partisans and historians claim, the revision - of what happened in the town of Naliboki in May 1943 began in 2001, when the massacre was first being studied by the Institute of National Remembrance, a Polish government agency known as IPN, that is devoted to prosecuting "crimes against the Polish nation." The agency's report, which has thus far been limited to a short brief released this year, claims that on the morning of March 8, 1943, Soviet partisans shot 128 civilians outside their homes.

About two-thirds of the way in, the report brings up the Jewish partisans affiliated with Bielski and his three brothers, noting that though some accounts by witnesses and historians place the group at the scene of the attack, these accounts have not been verified.

"Therefore the fact of participation of partisan soldiers of the Bielski Unit in the attack on Naliboki village is merely one of the versions of the investigated case," the report concludes.

Robert Bielski, Tuvia Bielski's son, said that his problem with the IPN report and the subsequent Gazeta Wyborcza article was twofold.

"The Bielskis were not in Naliboki in May of '43," he said, echoing historians who believe that the partisans did not arrive in the area until August of that year.

"But," he added, "even if it were true, which I know it's not, the 128 people are in no way close to the millions of people that the Polish people herded towards the Germans so they could be extinguished. I believe it's just a consistent Polish anti-Semitism and the Poles are sloughing off their own crimes of being an enemy of the Jews during World War II."

The IPN declined to comment on the controversy, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation. But Piotr Gluchowski, the Gazeta Wyborcza reporter who co-wrote the article on the IPN report - as well as a longer feature story about the Bielski brothers, published several days later - was more forthcoming. Gluchowski wrote in an e-mail that he was sure the Bielski partisans were not involved in the massacre, but that, on the other hand, the IPN "are no amateurs. This is a government organization, very serious thing."

Gluchowski and his co-writer, Marcin Kowalski, are authoring a book about the Bielski partisans. Gluchowski said it will be published in December to coincide with the release of the film. (A publicist representing the film said she had no knowledge of the book project.)

"The Bielskis... are completely unknown in Poland," Gluchowski said in the email. "But - I think - it will be hot in December, when 'Defiance' goes to the theaters."

According to both Gluchowski and the detractors who found his article unsympathetic, the Bielskis are known in Poland only to the extent that some Polish nationalists have seized upon the idea that a Jewish partisan group collaborated with the Soviets to kill Polish civilians. The IPN itself is currently dominated by members of Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, a rightist party, Gluchowski said.

Whether the debate over the Bielski partisans will seep into the reception of "Defiance" remains to be seen. The Variety story appeared briefly on the magazine's Web site, is no longer accessible because, according to the publication's editor, Dana Harris, it had not been properly edited.

As for the movie itself, shooting was completed last year, before the IPN released its report. Judging from the film's trailer, there was no question in the minds of the filmmakers that Tuvia Bielski and his followers deserve to be celebrated.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

$100,000 Reward Offered for Information Leading to Convictions of GOPOrganizations Who Violate the Law

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An effort to deter attempts by Republican donors aimed at "swiftboating" Democrats from Barack Obama to Senate and House candidates was launched Friday.

"Our aim is to stop the 'swiftboat' groups before they get off the ground. These people need to be stopped," said Tom Matzzie, founder of the effort. "Our focus will include Freedom's Watch, Newt Gingrich's American Solutions 527 and other efforts as they materialize."

Accountable America will shine a spotlight on Republican donors who have contributed to such efforts in past elections in order to discourag them from financing efforts similar to the 2004 "swiftboating" of Senator John Kerry and current attacks on members of the House and Senate.

-- The new group will offer a $100,000 reward to those providinginformation that leads to the conviction or judgment against a conservativeor business-related organization that violates the law.

-- Accountable America will provide information to the public throughtelevision ads, mailings, phone calls and its Web site.

-- Next week the organization plans to send a mailing warning nearly10,000 Republican donors of the consequences of funding organizations that break or skirt the law.

Tom Matzzie is a prominent progressive campaigner formerly withMoveOn.org Political Action. In 2007, Freedom's Watch was formed as aresponse in part to the success of MoveOn's efforts.

" ... [Max Holland] says Lee Harvey Oswald did it and did it alone! His goal, he says, is to heal our national paranoia about Kennedy's murder, to lay to rest the lingering belief that there was some sort of conspiracy (which most Americans believe), and to have this traumatic event finally settled in the national id. ... "

A detailed and lengthy rebuttal of Max Holland (who has been featured in The Nation) and his defence of the Warren Commission. On the subject of the JFK assassination, Holland is roughly in the same camp as Chomsky and Cockburn:

Max Holland? He got his start at the Voice of America, long acknowledged as a propaganda outlet for the CIA abroad. And when "liberal" Holland couldn't get his regular employer, The Nation, to run one of his lone-nut screeds, whom did he turn to? Why, the CIA, of course, which was more than happy to publish his work in their in-house publication "Studies in Intelligence."

Consider for just a moment. Why is it that everywhere you look in the media, the voices telling us that Oswald was a lone assassin (and therefore, the CIA didn't do it) all seem to have ties to the CIA?

Who Better to Defend the CIA than the CIA? Gary Aguilar, San Francisco

Among myriad ironies in Mel Ayton's review of "A Farewell to Justice," perhaps the greatest is Mel Ayton's offering author Max Holland's CIA-published work as an answer to Joan Mellen's exhaustive elucidation of the myriad CIA ties to the Kennedy case.

For example, Ayton trots out Holland's remarkable discovery that the sole reason Jim Garrison had for suspecting the CIA in the events in Dallas was because he'd been duped by fiendishly clever KGB dezinformatsiya planted in a Rome daily, Il Paese Sera. Ayton apparently has more faith in the theory than even its supposed author does. For Holland refused to defend it in a public debate with me last September in Washington, D.C. before a live audience and rolling C-SPAN cameras. [1] On why he might have chosen not to, one scarcely knows where to begin.

But perhaps it's worth starting with the fact that Holland's famous breakthrough isn't Holland's, something he has never disclosed (apparently even to Ayton), but was forced to admit when I confronted him during our debate. Steve Dorril was the first one to make "Holland's" argument in an article published by Lobster Magazine in 1983, something Ayton could have easily found in a simple search of the web. [2] "Holland's" discovery apparently next surfaced when Warren Commission defender, John McAdams, ran it in a 1999 newsgroup post, [3] two years before Holland presented it for the first time.

The "proof" Dorril, McAdams and Holland offered that Il Paese Sera was a communist conduit consisted mostly of testimony the CIA's Richard Helms delivered during a 1961 Senate appearance. [3] As this author has shown, Helms's sworn assertions during this 1961 Senate appearance are no more credible than the testimony he gave during another Senate hearing that led to his conviction and the page 1 New York Times headline, "Helms Is Fined $2,000 and Given Two-Year Suspended Prison Term--U.S. Judge Rebukes Ex-C.I.A. Head for Misleading (Senate) Panel." [4]

Without offering a shred of proof, Ayton recycles Holland's dubious claim that, "the (Il Paese Sera) articles were NOT (sic) already in the works long before Shaw's arrest, as Mellen claims - It was Shaw's arrest that prompted [Il Paese Sera to write] those stories." How Ayton knows that the articles "were NOT already in the works long before Shaw's arrest," he does not say. But had Ayton (or Holland) bothered to contact Il Paese Sera's editors, they would probably have told him what they have told others: that the six-part series had nothing to do with (and said nothing about) the KGB or the JFK assassination; that they had never heard of Jim Garrison when they assigned the story six months before [which was also six months before Garrison had charged Shaw]; and that they were astonished to see that Shaw might have any connection to the assassination.

Finally, echoing Holland, Ayton claims that the Italian articles were Garrison's sole reason for suspecting the Agency. If they really were the sole source of his seduction, one would have expected some contemporaneous evidence of it. But there is none.

As Edward Epstein has pointed out, during his twenty-six-page interview in Playboy Magazine's October 1967 issue, Garrison's most comprehensive review of his case that year, the D.A. ticked off eight reasons to suspect the CIA. None of them included Il Paese Sera or the subject of the articles, the still-mysterious Rome World Trade Center, Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC). [5] Nor did he even mention Clay Shaw, although perhaps because of the pending legal wrangle. [6] Moreover, Garrison wrote the foreword to Harold Weisberg's 1967-published book, entitled "Oswald in New Orleans--Case of Conspiracy with the CIA." (my emphasis) Despite the perfect opportunity, as with Playboy, Garrison again uttered not a word about Il Paese Sera, Shaw or the CMC. [7]

Finally, it is unhelpful for the central role Holland and Ayton have the Rome daily playing that Garrison never once cited or referred to those reports during the Shaw trial. Nor did he even use them as a basis for questioning Shaw. He never asked Shaw, for example, whether he had worked for CMC or for the CIA, both of which were the focus of all six stories. [8]

Ayton next rallied to the defense of a former Miami Herald reporter, Donald Bohning, who Mellen had described as "CIA linked." In response, Ayton quoted from a complaining email from the man: "(I) never took a cent from the CIA," Bohning apparently wrote, "and was outraged by the implication - along with the terms 'writer asset' and 'utilized' - Top editors at the [Miami] Herald were well aware - and approved - of my contacts with the CIA during the 1960s."

Tellingly, Ayton omits the most damning portion of Mellen's account. Even if money never changed hands, and Mellen nowhere suggests it did, Bohning's relationship with The Agency was far from the routine and casual relationship reporters have with government insiders. As Mellen points out, Bohning was apparently so useful to The Agency it gave him his own, unique cryptonym, "AMCARBON-3." Bohning "had received his Provisional Covert Security Approval as a CIA confidential informant on 8/21/67," Mellen wrote, "then Covert Security Approval itself on 11/14/67." And no less than the CIA's Deputy Director of Plans himself "approved the use of Bohning in the CIA's Cuban operations." [9]

For those who have forgotten Carl Bernstein's cautionary tale about the corrosive effect such relationships can have on credible and honest journalism [10], or the New York Times's Christmas week 1977 mea culpa for having compromised itself and its readers by engaging in similar unhealthy relationships with the CIA, a recent scandal is worth mention.Judy Miller, the recently disgraced New York Times reporter, was such a darling of the Bush Administration and the military that she was granted a security clearance not unlike Bohning's. [11] Her bogus, prewar scare stories about the imminence of the Iraqi threat that the "leftist" New York Times published on the front page were a boon to the Neocons in the Bush Administration bent on manufacturing consent for war.

That Bohning's higher-ups at the Miami Herald knew and approved of his cozy relationship only compounds the impropriety. At least The New York Times' "top editors" publicly donned hair shirts and apologized to readers for betraying their trust. And not without reason. Bernstein documented that the problem wasn't the occasional tainting tie between the rare, lowly stringer and the CIA. It was the myriad, compromising arrangements between The Agency and the higher-ups in outfits such as CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The L. A. Times, etc. that really took the bark out of our press watchdogs. This is not to say Bohning was corrupt, but that Mellen's concern is well founded.

Ayton puts Holland in service of downplaying the links Mellen details between Clay Shaw and The Agency. "In reality, Clay Shaw had simply been one of thousands of businessmen who had once been a source for the CIA through its Domestic Contact Service - Shaw was a Kennedy supporter (and a) decorated war veteran."

Here, flag-waving is substituted for dealing with Mellen's great spadework on this interesting question. Ayton does not dispute that, as Mellen reported, Shaw had been cleared by the Agency for project QKENCHANT (which) authorized trusted CIA personnel for clearance to recruit or enlist 'civilians,' people not officially with the Agency, to discuss 'projects, activities and possible relationships.'" [p. 133]

If Ayton is right that Shaw's arrangement was unexceptional, and that "thousands" of other American businessmen had similarly been empowered by the CIA to "recruit or enlist 'civilians,'" there is no record of it. Moreover, the CIA called QKENCHANT an "operational project," not an intelligence-gathering project. And Shaw's records were kept in The Agency's "operational files," not with the "innocent" Domestic Contact files that housed the routine debriefings of 'simple' returning American businessmen.

Ironically, Ayton ignores what even Max Holland has acknowledged: Shaw lied under oath in denying his association with the CIA. "Have you ever worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?" Shaw's own defense attorney F. Irvin Dymond asked him. "No, I have not," replied Shaw." [11] Against the interests of his own Agency, CIA director, Richard Helms, put the lie to that. Holland relates that Shaw had had an [at least] eight-year relationship with the CIA, sending The Agency information on 33 separate occasions that the CIA invariably graded as "of value" and "reliable." [12]

One might have expected that, if only for political reasons, a Warren Commission loyalist bent on diverting suspicion from the CIA and focusing it instead on Garrison would have avoided citing Holland's essay, "The Lie That Linked the CIA to the Kennedy Assassination." For that poorly conceived, anti-Garrison tirade was published by the CIA itself after his fellows at The Nation Magazine, where Holland works as a contributing editor, rejected the paper from their magazine. [13]

To undermine the important revelations of Thomas Edward Beckham, a House Select Committee witness Mellen features, Ayton describes him as a "semi-literate," implying that the memory of a poor reader could be safely ignored. During a visit to New Orleans, Mellen interviewed former House Select Committee investigator, L. J. Delsa, a murder investigator with more than 30 years experience working variously as a federal, state or local official. In an interview on December 7, 2005, Delsa opined that, on the basis of his personal knowledge, he believed that Beckham was a credible witness.

Similar problems mar the rest of Ayton's review. But at the end of the day, still standing are Mellen's demolitions of the myths that the CIA played no part in JFK's demise and that Oswald was a loner. And she has established quite convincingly that Clay Shaw's International Trade Mart in New Orleans was a hornet's nest of activity undoubtedly related to The Agency in ways known only to those with access to still-sealed files.

With what we've already learned from declassified files, it's no mystery why the government has remained so passionate about maintaining secrecy concerning JFK's demise. For it is information that has been painfully extracted from once-secret files over the past 41 years that has steadily eroded the fables upon which the Warren Commission built its case. Mellen's book has completed a demolition that Ayton's valiant efforts can't hope to stave off.

It's past time he understood that. For when keepers of the flickering flame have to resort to Agency-abetted disquisitions to defend The Agency's innocence, the gig is up and it's time to sent up a white flag.

Gary L. Aguilar, San Francisco

[1] The proposition, "Was Garrison Duped by the KGB?" was the subject of our debate held during a conference hosted by the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, September 18, 2004 at the Marriot Wardman Park Hotel. Holland was to have defended that proposition but did not. He chose instead to argue that Jim Garrison had "lied" when he said in his book, "On the Trail of the Assassins," that he'd not heard of the Il Paese Sera articles until after the Clay Shaw trial. While Holland established that Garrison had indeed seen the Il Paese Sera articles before trial, he was less convincing that Garrison's inaccurate statement was really a lie rather than a mistake. As noted in the text, Garrison never used any of the material in the articles during the trial, and his book was published 21 years after he'd seen them.

[2] Steve Dorril, Permindex: The International Trade in Disinformation. Lobster: the journal of parapolitics, intelligence and State Research, #3, 1983. On-line at: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/lobster.htm [Had Ayton but google-searched the obvious words, "Il Paese Sera, CMC," the second "hit" would have taken him directly to this article.]

In recent days we have seen an excellent example of how the Communists use the false news story. In late April rumors began to circulate in Europe, rumorscharging that the Algerian-based generals who had plotted the overthrow of President De Gaulle had enjoyed support from NATO, the Pentagon, or CIA. Although this fable could have been started by supporters of General Challe, it bears all the earmarks of having been invented within the bloc. In Western Europe this lie was first printed on the 23rd of April by a Rome daily called Il Paese.

Senator KEATING: Is Il Paese a Communist paper?

Mr. HELMS: It is not a Communist paper, as such. We believe it to be a crypto-Communist paper but it is not like Unita, the large Communist daily in Rome. It purports to be an independent newspaper, but obviously it serves Communist ends. The story charged --

"It is not by chance that some people in Paris are accusing the American secret service headed by Allen Dulles f having participated in the plot of the four 'ultra' generals * * * Franco, Salazar, Allen Dulles are the figures who hide themselves behind the pronunciamentos of the 'ultras'; they are the pillars of an internationalconspiracy that, basing itself on the Iberian dictatorships, on the residue of the most fierce and blind colonialism, on the intrigues of the C.I.A. * * * reacts furiously to the advance of progress and democracy * * *."

We found it interesting that Il Paese was the starting point for a lie that the Soviets spread around the world. This paper and its evening edition, Paese Sera, belong to a small group of journals published in the free world but used as outlets for disguised Soviet propaganda. These newspapers consistently release and replay anti-American, anti-Western, pro-Soviet bloc stories, distorted or wholly false. Mario Malloni, director of both Il Paese and Paese Sera, has been a member of the World Peace Council since 1958. The World Peace Council is a bloc-directed Communist front.

On the next day Pravda published in Moscow a long article about the generals' revolt.

Senator KEATING: May I interrupt there? Did Pravda pick it up as purportedly from Il Paese? Did they quote the other paper, the Italian paper, as the source of that information?

Mr. HELMS: Pravda did not cite Il Paese. But instead of having this originate in Moscow, where everybody would pinpoint it, they planted the story first in Italy and picked it up from Italy and this is the way it actually went out in point of time [sic].This is important context for understanding the PAESE SERA articles that linked Clay Shaw (correctly) to CMC/Permindex, and connected CMC/Permindex (falsely) to support for the OAS attempts against De Gaulle, various fascist and Nazi forces, etc. The PAESE SERA stories were quickly picked up and repeated by leftist journals in France, Moscow, and Canada.

This by no means proves that the CMC/PERMINDEX stuff was a KGB disinformation operation. The left-wing journalists at the paper would have been happy to smear what they considered to be the "forces of capitalist imperialism" without any direct orders from Moscow. Indeed, Helms is only *inferring* that the earlier story about anti-De Gaulle generals was a KGB operation.

But this episode does put the 1967 articles on Shaw/Permindex into context. The articles were, in one way or another, motivated by a communist ideological agenda.

[12] Max Holland. The Lie that Linked the CIA to the Kennedy Assassination. On-line at the CIA's website at: http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/fall_winter_2001/article02.html

[13] On condition I not disclose his identity, a former editor at The Nation told me that Holland's CIA-published article had been rejected by Holland's fellow editors. I asked Holland about the rejection in person at a Washington, D.C. JFK conference on November 19 2005. "Politics," he said, explained the rejection.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

" ... Casey was on the radio for more than 40 years, spending five of those years overseas as a CIA subcontractor during the early ’90s. He was involved in psychological operations during Operation Desert Storm, presenting the United States and allied forces in a positive light to the Iraqi people ... "

Longtime Boston area radio personality enjoying his retirementwww.patriotledger.com

Longtime Duxbury resident Sean Casey has retired after over 40 years on the radio. He spent the past 8 years as the program director and afternoon on-air personality at WPLM-FM.

By Stephanie ChoateThe Patriot LedgerAug 25, 2008

DUXBURY — He’s been a CIA subcontractor, a high-profile radio personality, a recording artist and a street-corner singer, but now Sean Casey has added retiree to that list.

The longtime radio show host retired in April, and said he has been enjoying retirement tremendously.

“I love to quote a friend who always says retirement is like having six Saturdays and a Sunday,” Casey said. ...

Casey was on the radio for more than 40 years, spending five of those years overseas as a CIA subcontractor during the early ’90s. He was involved in psychological operations during Operation Desert Storm, presenting the United States and allied forces in a positive light to the Iraqi people, he said.

“We’d try to convince them ... Saddam was a bad guy, and if you’re tired of it and don’t want to fight, come on over and we’ll treat you good,” he said. “Basically, propaganda, but true propaganda.”

He spent six months in London in 1990 and six months in Cairo, Egypt, in 1991. As for the rest, “I’m not allowed to talk about that,” Casey said.

Casey said he’s not really sure how he came to work for the CIA.

“I was a high-profile radio personality in the Boston area, and one day I got a phone call just asking me if I’d be interested in going overseas for a month, and the month turned into five years,” he said.

“The best part for me was just the experience of being involved with the U.S. government and doing something positive to, hopefully, change world in a positive way,” he said. “But getting back to the good old U.S. of A. and Duxbury felt real good.” ...

Casey was program director and an afternoon on-air personality at WPLM-FM for eight years before he retired.

“It was difficult (to leave radio), but I just felt that it was time,” he said. “I guess I was getting burned out, because I’d been doing it for so long. I’ve really wanted to do something else; I’m just not sure what it is yet.”

The Obama campaign is airing a television ad defending the presumptive Democratic nominee against Republican attacks over his ties to an unrepentant Vietnam War-era terrorist, William Ayers. The 30-second spot marks a response to a new ad by a conservative group, the American Issues Project, which hits Senator Obama for his connections to Mr. Ayers, a former member of the radical group the Weather Underground who is now a professor in Illinois and lives near Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers once held a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama's state Senate campaign in Illinois, and the Obama campaign has described their relationship as "friendly," although Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Ayers's association with the Weathermen. "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" a narrator says in the ad. "McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers's crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old." The ad implicitly suggests Senator McCain was behind the ad attacking Mr. Obama, even though it was bought by an independent group. Mr. McCain has criticized his ties to Mr. Ayers, and his campaign did so again yesterday. "The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about Senator Obama's judgment than any TV ad ever could," a spokesman, Brian Rogers, said.

Monday, August 25, 2008

WASHINGTON, June 15 --A Princeton University expert on Latin America says he has abandoned plans to become Foreign Affairs magazine's book reviewer covering the Western Hemisphere, citing accusations that the journal bowed to pressure from Henry A. Kissinger and his associates.

The expert, Jeremy Adelman, agreed in May to take on the reviews later this month when Kenneth Maxwell leaves his post as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs. But Mr. Adelman said that he had second thoughts after reading accounts of a dispute between Mr. Maxwell and his editors and senior officials of the council.

Mr. Maxwell resigned in protest on May 13 after reviewing ''The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability,'' by Peter Kornbluh. His review angered Mr. Kissinger, the secretary of state when Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile in 1973, and William Rogers, the former assistant secretary of state for Latin American Affairs under Mr. Kissinger. (Mr. Rogers is now a vice president of the consulting firm Kissinger Associates.) Mr. Rogers contended that the review exaggerated United States responsibility for the downfall of the Chilean president Salvador Allende.

Foreign Affairs then published an exchange between Mr. Rogers and Mr. Maxwell, and gave Mr. Rogers the last word in a subsequent letter. Though the journal customarily lets authors reply to criticism, it has refused to publish Mr. Maxwell's rebuttal, in what he charges is a bid to silence debate over United States policy on Mr. Kissinger's watch. Mr. Adelman said that soon after accounts of the dispute appeared in The Nation, The New York Times and the Folha de Sao Paulo, a Brazilian daily, he received numerous e-mail messages , some attacking him as ''a scab.'' His resignation was reported on Sunday in the Folha and in another Brazilian daily, O Globo.

''While I still think this is an important position and the magazine is important, the amount of time it would take for me to explain the situation to the world of Latin America experts, the world that I inhabit, was too great,'' he said. He added that the editor of Foreign Affairs, James F. Hoge Jr., was quoted in the Folha as saying that Peter G. Peterson, the council's chairman, had called to advise him that the review had upset Mr. Kissinger and others. Mr. Hoge acknowledged the call yesterday, but denied that Mr. Kissinger had pressured him. He demanded that Mr. Maxwell produce proof of his accusation. He said that he did not print Mr. Maxwell's final rebuttal because both sides had had their say.

Mr. Maxwell said that he had learned of the pressure in discussions with Mr. Hoge and had kept records of those conversations.

Theresa Cimino, an assistant to Mr. Kissinger, said he was traveling and could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Hoge said that he was surprised at Professor Adelman's resignation, and that the professor -- not Foreign Affairs -- had bowed to pressure.

Last November Foreign Affairs, the prestigious journal of theCouncil on Foreign Relations, published a review of The PinochetFile: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, a newbook by Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive'sChile Documentation Project. Written by the council's chief LatinAmerica expert, Kenneth Maxwell, the review upset two formerstatesmen who figure prominently in the book and who also happen tobe influential actors at the council: Henry Kissinger and hislongtime associate William Rogers. In May, after an acrimoniousexchange between Rogers and Maxwell in Foreign Affairs--an exchangethat Maxwell insists was abruptly curtailed as a result of pressurefrom Kissinger and Rogers--Maxwell resigned in protest from thecouncil. His departure raises questions about intellectual freedomat the council; about editorial independence at Foreign Affairs,where Maxwell spent eleven years as Western Hemisphere bookreviewer; and about Kissinger's and Rogers's influence on thenation's pre-eminent foreign policy think tank.

Maxwell's review, "The Other 9/11: The United States and Chile,1973," was not a slashing polemic but a measured essay on Americanintervention in Chile in the 1970s. Maxwell expressed certainreservations about The Pinochet File, yet acknowledged that Kornbluhhad assembled a dossier that "significantly amplifies" our historicalknowledge of the campaign against President Salvador Allende, who wasoverthrown by a military coup on September 11, 1973. Halfway throughthe essay, the reviewer directed his ire at the Nixon-erapolicy-makers--Kissinger chiefly among them--who contributed toAllende's demise: "What is truly remarkable," Maxwell noted, "is theeffort--the resources committed, the risks taken, and theskullduggery employed--to bring a Latin American democracy down, andthe meager efforts since to build democracy back up. Left to theirown devices, the Chileans might just have found the good sense toresolve their own deep-seated problems. Allende might have fallen byhis own weight, victim of his own incompetence, and not become atragic martyr to a lost cause."

Maxwell's essay prompted a smoldering letter to the editor fromRogers, who worked under Kissinger at the State Department from 1974to 1977 and is currently vice chair of Kissinger Associates. "Themyth that the United States toppled President Salvador Allende ofChile in 1973 lives," Rogers proclaimed in the January/Februaryissue. "There is...no smoking gun. Yet the myth persists. It islovingly nurtured by the Latin American left and refreshed from timeto time by contributions to the literature like Peter Kornbluh's ThePinochet File and Kenneth Maxwell's review of that book."

Allende's fall, Rogers declared, was the result of "his disastrouseconomic policies, his attack on Chile's democratic institutions[and] the wave of popular resentment that swept the Chilean militaryto power." Rogers hastened to minimize US involvement in two highlycontroversial matters, both of which figure prominently in ThePinochet File: the murder of Chilean Gen. René Schneider in1970 and Operation Condor, a state-sponsored terror network set upby Pinochet that from 1975 to 1977 targeted critics all over theWestern Hemisphere and Europe. Among them was Orlando Letelier,Pinochet's most prominent opponent in the United States, who wasmurdered, along with American Ronni Moffitt, by a car bomb inWashington, DC, in 1976.

Round one of the Maxwell-Rogers exchange concluded with a rejoinderby Maxwell in the same issue. "William Rogers overreaches," Maxwellwrote. "To claim that the United States was not actively involved inpromoting Allende's downfall in the face of overwhelming evidence tothe contrary verges on incredulity." Maxwell went on to address avery delicate matter--Kissinger's and Rogers's knowledge of OperationCondor. Maxwell (following Kornbluh) insisted that the murder ofOrlando Letelier, in particular, was "a tragedy that might have beenprevented," since "other assassinations of opposition figures plannedby Condor in Europe were in fact prevented because the United Statestipped off the governments in question (France and Portugal) inadvance." Closing his reply, Maxwell upped the ante: "Somecountries," he wrote, "have established 'truth commissions' to lookinto such matters. In the United States, however, the record has beenextracted painfully, like rotten teeth."

Rogers returned to the battlefield with a second letter in theMarch/April issue, in which he accused Maxwell of "bias," dismissedthe notion that Letelier's murder could have been prevented anddenied that he bore any responsibility for the crimes committed underCondor. Rogers's tone suggested that Maxwell had crossed an invisibleline: "One would hope at least," Rogers ominously concluded, "thatMaxwell's views are understood to be his own and not those of theCouncil on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow."

On February 4, Maxwell had handed in a six-paragraph rebuttal toRogers's second letter--in which he wrote, "Rogers cannot foreverprovide a shield for his boss to hide behind"--but it never appeared.High-ranking sources at the council say that Kissinger and Rogersapplied enormous pressure, directly and indirectly, on ForeignAffairs editor James Hoge--and on the council itself--to close offthe debate. Neither Rogers nor Kissinger is a stranger to theinstitution: Rogers served three terms on its board of directors;Kissinger has been affiliated off and on since 1955, and he currentlyco-chairs a task force on US policy toward Europe. Maxwell notes thatthe institution's new president, Richard Haass, who succeeded LeslieGelb in 2003, "is very much anxious to engage him." Maxwell declinesto elaborate on the specific ways Kissinger and Rogers exerted theirinfluence, but he does allow that "they know how to act in thesematters, and they bring heavy guns to bear."

When his internal lobbying to get his rebuttal published failed,Maxwell felt compelled to act. On May 13 he resigned from the counciland from his post as book reviewer for Foreign Affairs. Theresignation was instantly accepted by Haass. In his resignationletter to Hoge, Maxwell wrote, "I have no personal ax to grind inthis matter, but I do have a historian's obligation to the accuracyof the historical record. The Council's current relationship with Mr.Kissinger evidently comes at the cost of suppressing debate about hisactions as a public figure. This I want no part of."

Hoge denies receiving pressure from Kissinger. "I never talked toHenry Kissinger about this at all," he says, "nor has anybody elsetold me that Henry had a view one way or the other." But Hogecertainly felt the sting of Rogers's fury. After round one of theexchange, Hoge received a call from Rogers, who recoiled fromMaxwell's suggestion that he was directly (or indirectly)complicitous in Operation Condor. Hoge urged Rogers to send a secondletter, and--curiously--assured him that the letter would concludethe exchange. Hoge then contacted Maxwell. "I called Ken," Hogerecalls, "and said, 'This is what Rogers thinks you are implying.'And he said, 'That is what I'm implying.' And I said, 'Ken, that putsme in an awkward position, because it's informed surmise that you arebasing this on, frankly. If there are hard facts to this, they haveyet to come out.'" Evidently Hoge does not read the books reviewed inhis own journal, because as Maxwell pointed out in the unpublishedreply, "Washington's knowledge about the Condor system and itsactivities during this period has been cautiously and carefullydocumented in John Dinges's book The Condor Years, especiallychapters 7-10, and in chapter 6 of Kornbluh's Pinochet File." Hogedeclined to explain why he promised Rogers--and not Maxwell, hisjournal's own Latin America expert--the last word in the exchange. "Adifferent call might have been made," Hoge admits. (Kissinger andRogers did not return phone calls, and Haass was traveling andunavailable for comment.)

Leaving the council, and vacating an endowed chair, was not an easydecision for Maxwell, a soft-spoken, English-born, 63-year-oldhistorian who has taught at Yale, Princeton and Columbia and whowrites for The New York Review of Books. "The burden was on me tomake a decision on an issue of principle," he says. "That's nevereasy. It's easier to acquiesce. But in this case I didn't feel likeacquiescing." On July 1 he will become a senior fellow at the DavidRockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard.

Oddly enough, Maxwell's departure coincides with the release of a20,000-page cache of Henry Kissinger's telephone conversations fromthe 1970s, some of which concern Chile. "We didn't do it," Kissingerinformed President Nixon after President Allende was overthrown byGeneral Pinochet. "I mean we helped them." In light of these newtranscripts, Maxwell's call for an American "truth commission" onChile seems more appropriate than ever. But don't expect to find thedetails in the pages of Foreign Affairs.

The New York Times editorial staff recently rejected an op-ed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), which responded to a one published last week by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). The Times said Obama’s article “worked” because it offered “new information” and that they would be “pleased” to “look at another draft” from McCain.

While the Times wanted something “new” from McCain, the New York Post — owned by Rupert Murdoch — has no problem republishing McCain campaign talking points — even if they’re not totally accurate. Today, the Post published McCain’s rejected article in its entirety. From McCain’s Post op-ed:

In 2007, he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we’d taken his advice, the war would have been lost. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Maliki has endorsed his timetable - when the Iraqi prime minister has merely said that he’d like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of US troops at some unspecified future point.

The inconvenient truth for McCain’s piece is that Maliki (and more recently his spokesman) did endorse Obama’s timetable in a recent interview with Der Spiegel:

“US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

But McCain didn’t stop there, offering a baseless attack on Obama, claiming that he “doesn’t want to hear” what “the commanders on the ground” in Iraq “have to say.” Obama heard what they had to say just yesterday.

Naturally, the right wing is outraged that the “liberal” New York Times rejected McCain’s op-ed, falsely claiming that its decision is unprecedented. Lucky for them…there’s always Rupert Murdoch.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

There are two sides bleeding and too many dead in what is hopefully the aftermath of a weekend war in the Caucasus. And right on cue, the prime opinion space for the American mind is being occupied this Monday morning by a propagandist for perpetual war.

"Will Russia get away with it?" asks the beaming columnist for the New York Times, his smile winking at you as if no way he could be talking up death and disaster.

On one side of the world, writes the propagandist, you have "the United States and its democratic allies." On the other side, you'll find "dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical regimes" who "seem happy to work together to weaken the influence of the United States and its democratic allies."

"The United States, of course, is not without resources and allies to deal with these problems and threats," hints the propagandist. "But at times we seem oddly timid and uncertain." Which brings us around to his winking question again: "Will we let Russia get away with it?"

But what if we paraphrase a famous movie hero and remind the propagandist that aggressive is as aggressive does. Then, we may ask, which side of the propagandist's world last Thursday picked up its guns and blasted a path through the Caucasus Mountains to the city of Tskhinvali, killing as many local militia as possible and quite a few others who somehow got in the way?

Was it the enemies of the US and its allies who did this thing? Was it the Russians? Who was it who sent 30,000 refugees fleeing northward for their lives, some of whom stayed North just long enough to catch their breaths before heading South again to fight for their homeland?

Maybe the propagandist means to ask if we will let Russia get away with letting so many refugees flee into its country so quickly? I mean, by comparison, how does that make the US immigration police look in the eyes of the world?

As it turns out, the Russians were not only watching, but waiting, says Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Global Research. "The Russian response," he writes, "was entirely predictable."

Against the predominantly Georgian military (who were at least accompanied by Israeli advisors, and very likely other nationalities, too, although the New York Times was good enough to minimize embarrassing gossip of American involvement over the weekend) the Russians let go an onslaught of tanks, driving the Georgian coalition backward as quickly as they had arrived.

Does the propagandist mean to ask whether we will let the Russians get away with that tank attack? It's a curious question, because it seems to accept the premise that "the United States and its democratic allies" should certainly be allowed to get away with marching on Tskhinvali next time, only without anyone else "happy to work together" against it.

The Russians did go farther than just pushing back the Georgian coalition. Their leaders exercised a right to "retaliation" which is a little broader than a right to "protect and defend." It would be better if we lived in a world where nobody was allowed to "retaliate." But I live in Texas, and the movement against retaliation isn't going to start here, so maybe the propagandist thinks it should begin in Georgia? We can see plainly that it won't begin at the New York Times.

In the end, I wonder if the propagandist has read any Jung lately, because he seems to have a very immature conception of himself, completely unable to recognize that he has become his own shadow: "dictatorial and aggressive and fanatical." But in this regard he serves his social function perfectly as a perfect reflection of the mind of New York Times readers everywhere.

Well, not to be too harsh, there is some helpful reporting that slips through the teeth at the Times. On Monday morning we can also read how that wearily retreating Georgia coalition was expressing bitter disappointment that more of the US and its allies were not there when, apparently, they had been expected to show up.

After the traumatized soldiers from the Georgia coalition get home and have a little more time to think about what they have lost forever, they may wish to take up the question of the propagandist, who knows? Make it their life's work, for pay. Or they may do what many young men have done among the US and its allies, that is, start a local chapter of veterans against war.

Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He is a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published by AK Press. He can be reached at: gmosesx@gmail.com

Summary: The Washington Post uncritically reported the false suggestion in an ad by Sen. John McCain that Sen. Barack Obama wrote letters in support of a Chicago housing project proposed by Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko's company "in return" for Rezko's "help[ing] him buy his million-dollar mansion." In fact, Obama reportedly wrote the letters in 1998 but did not purchase his house until 2005.

In an August 22 Washington Post article, staff writers Jonathan Weisman and Robert Barnes uncritically reported the false suggestion in an ad by Sen. John McCain that Sen. Barack Obama wrote letters in support of a Chicago housing project proposed by Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko's company, New Kenwood LLC, "in return" for Rezko's "help[ing] him buy his million-dollar mansion." Weisman and Barnes wrote of the McCain campaign ad:

"The spot raises Obama's relationship with Rezko, saying that 'one of Obama's biggest fundraisers helped him buy his million-dollar mansion,' and charges that in return 'Rezko got political favors.' " The McCain ad states that "from Obama, Rezko got political favors" while showing a headline from a June 13, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times article that stated "Obama's letters for Rezko." In fact, according to the Sun-Times article cited by McCain, Obama wrote the letters in 1998; however, he did not purchase his house until 2005.

Additionally, Weisman and Barnes did not note that, while the Sun-Times article reported that Obama "did a political favor" for Rezko by writing letters to state and local government officials in support of a Chicago housing project proposed by Rezko's company, the article also included statements from Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton and Rezko's attorney that challenge the article's assertion that Obama performed a "favor" for Rezko. The Sun-Times quoted Burton stating that "[t]his wasn't done as a favor for anyone" and "I don't know that anyone specifically asked him to write this letter nine years ago." The paper also quoted Rezko's attorney Joseph Duffy stating: "Mr. Rezko never spoke with, nor sought a letter from, Senator Obama in connection with that project."

From the Washington Post article:

That provoked a furious response by McCain campaign and Republican National Committee aides, who charged hypocrisy and argued that the senator from Illinois had received help purchasing his South Side Chicago mansion from businessman Tony Rezko, a convicted felon.

[...]

The senator from Arizona also quickly assembled a response ad, in which a narrator intones, "Barack Obama knows a lot about housing problems." The spot raises Obama's relationship with Rezko, saying that "one of Obama's biggest fundraisers helped him buy his million-dollar mansion," and charges that in return "Rezko got political favors."

Saturday, August 23, 2008

What is CNN doing interviewing the founder of an online discussion forum that promotes selective breeding of the human species?

As part of its ongoing "Black in America" project, CNN posted a story to its website earlier this week titled "Could an Obama presidency hurt black Americans?" Credited to CNN correspondent John Blake, the piece quotes the wit and wisdom of Steve Sailer, identified only as "a columnist for The American Conservative magazine."

Specifically, the CNN story quotes a column by Sailer first published last year in which he opined that Obama offers voters "White guilt repellent."

"So many whites want to be able to say, 'I'm not one of them, those bad whites. Hey, I voted for a black guy for president,'" Sailer wrote.

What the CNN article fails to note is that in addition to writing columns and movie reviews for The American Conservative, Sailer is the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, a neo-eugenics online discussion forum where right-wing journalists and race scientists have promoted selective breeding of the human species. He also writes frequently for the anti-immigrant hate site Vdare.com, named for the first white child born in America, and runs a website, isteve.com.

Sailer's website is rife with primitive stereotypes. On it, Sailer mocks professional golfer Annika Sorenstam for having well-developed muscles and claims that Asian men have a hard time finding dates because they look "less masculine" than other men.

Last January, on the hate site vdare.com, Sailer labeled Obama a "wigger."

"He's a remarkably exotic variety of the faux African-American, but a wigger nonetheless," Sailer wrote. "Even genetically, Obama, whose East African descent is apparent in his unusual features, has only a distant relationship to the West Africans who are the ancestors of almost all African-Americans." To illustrate his point, Sailer used photos of Obama side-by-side with Jesse Jackson and the rapper Ludacris, "both of whom have conventional West African features."

Assessing the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, Sailer wrote, "The plain fact is that they [black Americans] tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."

This isn't the only time in recent history that CNN has turned to an unabashed bigot for commentary on controversial issues in America while cloaking the source's full identity.

In October 2006, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta reported on a study by J. Phillpe Rushton that purported to show that men, on average, are more intelligent than women. Gupta identified Rushton only as a professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Since 2002, Rushton has been the head of the Pioneer Fund, a pro-eugenics foundation that funds the research of academic racists like Jared Taylor and Rushton, who himself has received over $1 million in Pioneer grants. Among Rushton's findings are that on average blacks have larger genitals, breasts and buttocks, characteristics that, according to Rushton's "research," have an inverse relationship to brain size and, thus, intelligence.

Then last April, CNN host Paula Zahn invited white supremacist James Edwards to participate in a live on-air panel discussion of "self-segregation" in America. Edwards, a self-proclaimed crusader for the white race, is the co-founder of the Political Cesspool, a Memphis, Tenn.-based AM radio show whose guest lineup is a rogue's gallery of prominent figures on the radical right, including former Klan leader David Duke, anti-Semitic attorney Edgar Steele and the neo-Nazi teen singing duo Prussian Blue.

On that occasion, CNN identified Edwards rather sparingly as a "talk radio show host."

Ray Robison is passed off as a "National Security" analyst by the San Francisco Examiner. His "informed analyses" of intelligence and military issues has led him to write psyop howlers steeped in self-serving "conservative" fantasy, to wit: "The Afghanistan success story," "Al Qaeda's Man in Saddam's Iraq," "More Evidence of Saddam-al Qaeda Ties" and "Documents Support Saddam-Taliban Connection."

One of Robison's funniest pieces, posted at his blog in 2006, employs "logic" and "common sense" to arrive at an original "deduction": Bin Laden AND his henchman Saddam Hussein were behind the anthrax mailings:

"So, that anthrax probably didn't come from top US labs after all?"

Even the FBI, stumbling through an awkward cover up of the military operation, hasn't had the nerve to claim that Al Qaeda, in league with some "rogue nation," probably Iraq, perpetrated the lethal mailings:

"My reasons to disbelieve the US scientist theory are not based on discovered documents or interviews, but rather reason and probability. ... There are two prevailing theories. One theory is that a US scientist did it. The other is that the Saddam regime of Iraq or another rogue government with anthrax capability gave anthrax to al-Qaeda. Other theories abound but I will limit the argument to the two theories that fit the facts best.

"Those who follow the news about the anthrax attack know that for years the FBI has been investigating American defense scientists. Let me be more specific. The FBI has been pursuing U.S. citizens with high level clearances, years of professional experience and demonstrated loyalty to this country. The FBI has found nothing. As anyone working at a government facility knows, the morning of the 9/11 attack, physical security went on high alert. Military bases closed gates, people and vehicles were searched. It is not impossible that someone at a bio-weapons research facility could have smuggled out the anthrax that morning or shortly after in response to the attacks. It is highly unlikely though.

"That day and for at least the week after would have been the worst time to smuggle anything out of a high security area. ...

"Weaponized anthrax is in very short supply in the U.S. inventory. The supply we do have is most likely kept in conditions that enable inventory down to the microgram. It is surely weighed and measured anytime it is utilized for research. ...

"Motivation is the key problem in my view. Defense scientists at this level have Top Secret clearances, usually for compartmentalized information. It takes an extreme level of vetting to be granted this clearance. The scientist would surely be a Ph.D. That’s a lot of years of demonstrated hard work to throw it all away for a bioweapons attack without a solid motivation. The real people involved with this type of research are smart, dedicated, successful and patriotic, not like a character in a bad movie who is motivated to hurt the United States because they were overlooked for a promotion or saw some sort of poetic justice at using US anthrax on the United States. ...

"So what makes more sense? A nation and a terrorist organization that had the expertise, the opportunity, the motivation, and in the case of al Qaeda, in fact carried out a monstrous attack at nearly the same time did it? Or that an American scientist with the highest clearances, demonstrated patriotism by working in a very dangerous field to defend this nation, who would have lost years of hard work, with no seeming motivation, with a very small pool of suspects, and apparently small concern at being caught, smuggled the anthrax out of a high security facility to attack Americans?

"What does your common sense tell you? Most of my friends (usually military) at the time of the attacks believed the anthrax was a continuing, near simultaneous attack with the plane hijackings of 9/11."Source: http://rayrobison.typepad.com/ray_robison/2006/09/so_that_anthrax.html

Despite the psyop fantasies churned out by Robison, and the fact that he is consistently wrong by about a mile, the CIA's Mockingbird Press continue to publish this DoD/CIA shill's ludicrous cant.

"Ray Robison," the Examiner informs us, "is a former army officer who now works as a military analyst and freelance investigative journalist." At his blog, Robison notes, "I am a military analyst living in Huntsville, Alabama. Before that I was an army officer and also a member of the Iraq Survey Group. ... My work has been on Fox News, American Thinker, Rush Limbaugh, Slate (Hitchens) and 411mania." (Source: http://rayrobison.typepad.com/about.html)

Amazon notes that his "work" has been cited by "the New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Investor's Business Daily, US News and World Report, Slate Magazine, Jerusalem Post, National Review, and many national radio programs. Although he specializes in Iraqi document exploitation, he also writes about general military matters and exposes media abuses against the military and military members." (Source: http://www.amazon.com/Both-One-Trench-Saddams-Documents/dp/1419678663)

The Guardian tells us that Robison "has a greater claim to authority than most." That is, most third graders.

Robison's latest celebration of "reason" and "common sense" - in defense of the CIA and its machinations to draw the country into the illicit and genocidal Iraq war - is about as brilliant as his "deduction" that Bin Laden was behind the anthrax mailings. The latest "reasoned" argument, boiled down, is based on a PHANTOM DOCUMENT that a reporter for the Telegraph LOST ("Coughlin didn't know where it had gotten to after he saw it ... ") but TOLD him about:

"Author Ron Suskind claims in his new book The Way of the World that a letter reported to connect the Saddam regime to al Qaeda is a fake and was crafted by the CIA according to two former CIA officers. ...

"[S]hortly after the invasion of Iraq journalist Con Coughlin writing for The Telegraph revealed that he had been provided with a document from what he called a reliable, Iraqi source which expressly showed Mohammad Atta, the 9/11 attack ringleader, training for the mission in Iraq with Saddam's knowledge. Coughlin claimed that the letter formed the first “proof” that Saddam was involved with 9/11.

"I contacted Coughlin while researching the book and he stood by his report as of mid-2007. It is doubtful that many other people have seen the original of this document (including myself) since even Coughlin didn't know where it had gotten to after he saw it when I talked to him. ...

"While my coauthors and I have not seen it, we find the contents of the document (as described by Coughlin) to be within the bounds of reason. ..."

As we've seen, Robison's analytic prowess is not all it's cracked up to be, and leads him to draw ludicrous conclusions that happen to buttress the Murdochian "conservative" perspective on the world, ie. fascism. At least, his facile "reasoning" WOULD be amusing if it wasn't an obvious psyop tool intended to lead the naive down the primrose path of blind patriotic (jingoistic) ignorance and insanity - ideal conditions for the flourishing of Mussolini's corporate dreams.

Republican Cable Outlet Continues to Avoid Reporting on Actual ELECTION Fraud Concerns, Even as They Ignore the Very REAL Case of Ann Coulter's Third Degree Felony VOTER Fraud in Florida...

Eric Shawn, on behalf of Fox "News," on behalf of the RNC, continued their disingenuous and misleading "voter fraud" series over the weekend. As usual, they highlight phony fears of Democratic "voter fraud," naturally, while noting that there are "increasing cases" at what "some consider an alarming rate."

Again, and predictably, they recycle the same old, previously debunked ACORN bullshit in the latest segment. Prepare to hear more of the same, always mentioning ACORN by name, non-stop between here and November.

Trouble is, there are a few important points that Fox seems to forget to note when they join the Republicans in their misleading swiftboat campaign against ACORN. And then there's that one, rather notorious case of voter fraud felony that, for some odd reason, they seem unwilling to discuss in their continuing "investigative reports"...

In fact, ACORN has turned in a number of fraudulent registration forms from a few rogue workers in the past. But, as usual, Fox/RNC fails to note that it's ACORN themselves who verify each registration form before turning them over, as they are required to do by law whether they are fraudulent or not, to officials. The group flags the ones that can't be verified as potentially "fraudulent," before turning them in, as they are required to do by law. (Figured that was worth mentioning twice.) ...

We reported on the slimy new Fox/RNC "voter fraud" propaganda effort in May, when they first introduced their "special investigative series," and encouraged folks to send information to their special email "tip" address (VoterFraud@FoxNews.com) about Ann Coulter's no-uncertain-terms case of actual voter fraud which she committed in Florida. (Our years-long coverage of Coulter's fraud is detailed in full here and documented in full here.)

Despite the hundreds of BRAD BLOG readers who sent those "tips," Fox has yet to manage, as far as we know, to find time to report on Coulter's absolutely-proven case of third-degree felony voter fraud. Feel free to let 'em know again, and send them the links mentioned in the graf above. We'll be happy to appear on FNC anytime to back up our reporting. For some reason, the phone has yet to ring from them.

As News Hound's "Chrish" noted today ... t's the image, the perception, the psychology of storylines that is so important, not actual facts that might interfere. FOX is setting the stage for complaints of Democratic voter fraud come November when FOX candidates lose, should traditional Republican election-rigging tactics fail, delegitimizing the Democratic winners from the get-go.

Yup. Precisely. Though the misleading complaints will come beforehand and will be used by Fox and the Republican to try and keep legal, legitimate (even if they're Democratic-leaning) voters from being able to cast their votes at all. Fox and the RNC, of course, despise democracy.